FreemantleSaint

I wish I was there so much, despite (or because of) all the tension! We need to get an early goal to calm it down a bit.

I reckon that Davis, Richardson, Hooiveld and Fonte have to be in the top 50 football league players.

What sort of reception did Billy Sharp get from the Donny fans?

I'd choose Adkins style, can't understand why so many Saints fans have a problem with it. He comes across as bright, courteous and confident but not cocky. He doesn't give anything away tactically and never seems to let our rivals see any pressure that he's feeling. This guys is on the verge of taking us to two successive promotions and I can't believe some people are still looking to knock him.

As we're in the running for our second successive promotion I can live with the press finding us unpleasant.

Jos Hooiveld is pretty unlucky not to be in the top 10 in my opinion.

He was out in London on Friday night? Or earlier in the week?

Butterfield still injured, Guly ill. Good to see Chaplow back! Let's hope he's sharper than he was against Millwall.

Sounds ok then, seems like the day was relatively trouble-free, compared to our previous visits there. Presumably it's a lot easier for police to escort coaches to the ground (I nearly wrote stadium until I remembered which cess pit I was writing about!) on time than fans on foot from the train station. Nice to see our skint friends have actually got round to putting a roof on their away end too!

Apologies if this is being covered on another thread, but if so I couldn't find it, I was just wondering how our travelling fans found the policing tactics etc today. Were the police stopping drunk people getting on the coaches? Were the travel club coaches as dull as usual or was their a bit of fun for once? And did the Pompey fans try to break the bubble at all?

Lambert did the business again, Lallana was pretty dangerous, all the other midfielders did well too, but I thought Hooiveld was a rock today so he gets my vote.

From my era (1986-today): D Wallace, Case, Le Tiss, Rod Wallace, Flowers, Dodd, Benali, Monkou, Pahars, Niemi, Bridge, M Svensson, Marsden, Beattie, Kelvin Davis, Lallana, Lambert.

Harding for me definitely. Fox is poor defensively - he's slow and his positional sense is awful. Harding is the much better defender imo and is not too shabby going forwards either. Harding every day of the week.

The team I would pick: G Davis LB Harding D Fonte D Hooiveld RB Richardson LW Lallana M Hammond M Cork RW De Ridder F Guly F Lambert Subs: Bart, Fox, Martin, Schneiderlin, Barnard

Let's do away with the complacency now and see this one out professionally.

After watching that Matt Le Tiss programme on ESPN the other day I was thinking that CN never gets the credit he deserves for giving Le Tiss a chance in the game at a time when many managers were long-ball, work ethic merchants who would have had him on the first boat back to Guernsey. Thinking about what football was like in the mid/late 80's it was extremely brave of CN to keep putting a skinny, somewhat lazy teenager in the team even when we were battling relegation. Granted Le Tiss was an exceptional talent of course but we would never have got to enjoy it without CN taking huge risks and going against the footballing ethos of the time.

Anyone else a bit worried about potential trouble after the match if we send Plymouth down?

I'm going to the game today and I'm getting big match nerves already! Don't really want it to go down to the final day.

I live in Cornwall now, so setting off about 12 and I should be there for 1 :-) Can't wait to be there but have got butterflies in the stomach right now! Planning to use the club car park.

I'll just call him a c**t then.

All of those plus Shearer, Paul Buckle, Paul Tisdale (although I have fond memories of him playing well for the ressies), Eriksson, Kevin Blackwell, Hoddle (no League One experience), Southgate, Tony Adams, Tony Mowbray.... I really rate Eddie Howe but I don't think the amount of pressure at Saints would be fair on a young and upcoming manager. Of the stellar candidates I think O'Neill or Zola would be great but more realistically Steve Clarke, Ince, Coppell, Curbishley or Jewell would be ok to varying degrees. I'd keep an open mind about Keegan too because he did take Fulham up when they were the big spenders in the third tier.

I'm also wondering if anyone can remember being at a reserve game at The Dell when the score has been read out of an amazing first team away win? In the days when the reserves played on the same day as the first team. The best I can do is when Glenn ****erill scored two belters to give us a 2-1 win at Spurs after being one day. Not quite amazing though!

I was born in 1979 so sadly too young to have seen Saints win the FA Cup or to remember Keegan signing. But here's a different one for you:- The morning of either the '84 or '86 FA Cup semi-final - standing with my Grandad outside his house in Milton Road watching what seemed like hundreds and hundreds of coaches passing by as they set off for London (this being before Milton Road was made into a cul-de-sac). That memory will stick with me for as long as I live and I think gave me a taste of the excitement that football can bring.

I've really been missing the old paper fanzines and have a box of old copies of OTM, UI, RS and BS (which I used to write in) so it's great to see some fans having a go at a new one. For all that's been said about online fanzines none of them have matched the old paper ones in terms of variety, amount and creativity of content. I look forward to buying a copy before the Plymouth game.

Sorry, I got that wrong, the match kicks off at 12:15pm!